Shah Rukh Khan's Speech at Edinburgh
University
Ladies
and Gentlemen,
It
is indeed an honour for me to receive this doctorate today. “Humbled” is a word
often used by people in my profession. I dislike the hypocritically obsequious
connotation of it in these contexts so I’m not going to use it, but I will say
that such occasions have a way of putting me right in my place!
I
get invited to conferences and inaugurations now and then to speak. When I
receive the invitations, I also receive my brief. It’s usually about “success”
and my “tips” on it (not my toes- those are covered by the “I will never show
my toes” clause in my acting contracts. It’s my attempt at gender equality. My
co-stars have no nipple clauses; I have a no toes one).
Most
people believe Bollywood stars aren’t insightful about anything other than the
fateful occurrences that made them stars in the first place! I’ve
had the odd divergence from being taken for stupid though;
recently I got an email from the International Association of AdvertisingIt read,
“Dear Mr. Khan, The advertising community would like you to address them on Globalization
and disruptive marketing”. I spent the next 4 hours on Google trying to
assimilate the “disruptiveness” of innovating a product to match its market? But
it was one of those rare days when even Google can’t help you. A day when you
need to leave Google and ask God for deliverance. But I have a film releasing
soon, so I didn’t want to waste my quota of favours from God…believe you me, I
need a big hit right about now. So I did the next best thing. I made a grand
entry on my io hawk and told everybody, that there is nothing I can tell you
that you already don’t know.
You are such an august group of gathering…blah
blah. Instead let me entertain you because you all deserve a break, and before
the organizers could interject I started thrusting my pelvic into their faces
and broke out into the one and only intellectual thing I know to do… The Lungi
Dance. I got away with it without being “humbled” (it helps to be a better
dancer than most advertisers ) and what’s more, they seemed to have a good time.
But
that was a conference and this is a Doctorate from the prestigious University
of Edinburgh. So I’m going to try to sound intelligent and insightful especially
for you today. One of the subjects on the list of five I was sent for my speech
today was: “Life Lessons” so for what its worth: here goes.Let me start at the
very beginning.
Whatever
I have learnt of life has been at the movies. Actually the first few films that
I did in my career and their titles very nearly have formulated all that I
believe one should pass on as Life lessons to students of a prestigious
institutions like yours.
One
of the first movies of my career was a movie called Deewana. I
fall in a love with a widow, who I meet literally by accident in which I very
nearly kill her mother in law. I marry her. Not the mother in law but the
widow. The widow is not keen on the
marriage because she still loves her late husband but she marries me anyway. My
rich mean father disapproves of this unison and does what a mean rich father
does…tries to kill the widow. I am
naturally disgusted by his behavior and after a long two page stand off with
him, leave the house for good. Then for some reason apart from the fact that I
ride my motorcycle without holding the handlebar I have an accident. Seeing me
so forlorn and sad in the hospital bed my ex widow wife falls in love with me.
There is something about sick men that always attracts women to them. The
sicker the better. Then again by a chance of fate I rescue a stranger at night
from a bunch of goons, and guess what?? He turns out to be the original husband
of my ex widow wife, who hadn’t died inspite of his inheritance hungry uncle’s
best efforts. Evil uncle then kidnaps me and my ex widow now not so ex present
day wife to get hold of his nephew. I escape his clutches and come back with my
wife’s undead husband to rescue her. By now she is strapped to a bomb and after
a liberal round of fist fighting kicking and screaming the evil uncle is blown
to smithereens by the very same bomb that he had strapped on status confused
lady of the film. But not before the sacrificial ex-husband has done a
kamikaze, unstrapping his ex-wife and set the bomb off killing himself in the
bargain. All obstacles removed, our hero lives happily ever after with his
beloved wife.
I’m
not sure why the movie was called Deewana (which in Hindi means madness of a
particularly nice/romantic kind) but I have a feeling it had something to do
with the guy who came up with the plot!! So here’s my first life lesson,
inspired by the movie title Deewana: Madness (of the particularly nice/romantic
kind) is an absolute prerequisite to a happy and successful life.
Don’t
ever treat your little insanities as if they are aberrations that ought to be
hidden from the rest of the world. Acknowledge them and use them to define your
own way of living the only life you have. All the most beautiful people in the
world, the most creative, the ones who led revolutions, who discovered and
invented things, did so because they embraced their own idiosyncrasies. There’s
no such thing as “normal”. That’s just another word for lifeless.
Soon
after I acted in Deewana, I became the hapless hero of a movie called Chamatkar.
This movie had a more believeable plot line. I get cheated off all my money by
my best friend slash, conman and find myself asleep in a cemetery only to be
awakened by the ghost of a murdered mobster. A ghost that only I can see and
nobody else. I am very perceptive that way. Anywaythe mobster ghost helps me
get a job as a teacher through his ghostly good offices. I fall in love with his daughter from a wife
that has passed on after being duped by his flunky. Together, the ghost and I
organize a cricket match, yes I was doing that even before I owned a cricket
team, and avenge the various misdeeds done to us by bashing up the flunky and
the conman, forgive them and let each other descend into the respective abodes
where we belong. He goes back to the grave and I go away with the babe. Now Chamatkar, means miracle: right and
straightforward without any nuances. So my next lesson is the following: If you
ever find yourself cheated of all your money and sleeping on a grave, do not fear,a
miracle is near, either that or a ghost.
All
you have to do is fall asleep! In other words, no matter how bad it gets, life IS the miracle you are searching for.
There is no other one around the corner. Develop the faith in it to let it
take its own course, make all the effort you can to abide by its beauty and it
will not let you down. Use every resource you have been given, your mental
faculties, the ability of your heart to love and feel for those around you,
your health and good fortune: all of the thousands of gifts life has given you
to their maximum potential. Honour your life. Honour each gift and each moment
by not laying it to waste. There is no real measure of success in this world
except the ability to make good of life’s endowments to you.
Sometimes
life’s gifts arrive wrapped in all the wrong damned wrapping too, at which
point we have to learn to do two things with them: recognize them for what they
are and gamble on our fear that they might be disasters. This brings me to my
third life lesson inspired by two movies in which I played the anti-hero: Darr and Bazigar.
Twenty
years ago, in the Indian movie industry, roles were very clearly defined. They
provided the security of your stardom in a sense. If you’d been successful
playing an“angry young man”, you’d pretty much be angry and young for the rest
of your career. If you’d been a police inspector in three movies, odds were,
you’d be one in the next 33 too. This applied to female stars as well: wives
were wives, seductresses-seductresses, mother in laws- mother in laws, and so
on. Few actors would have willingly switched from romantic heroesto obsessively
violent lovers. I took the leap…not because I was particularly brave, but
because ( a very dear director friend of mine sat me
down and told me I was ugly. And being ugly necessarily meant I do bad guy
roles. I wasn’t the romantic hero types, he said, actually he used the words,
that my face was not chocolaty enough, whatever that meant.)So I started
to eat a lot of chocolate and while waiting for it to take effect, I jumped
into bad guy roles.Darr means fear in Hindi and everyone always tells you that
you ought to be brave so I’m not going to bore you with that idea. Instead let
me tell you this: Being brave means being shit scaredall the way to the party
but getting there and doing the Funky Chicken in front of all your teenage
kid’s friends anyway. Let me just add on behalf of all the fathers of the world
who have embarrassed their children by doing this…it takes a lot of bravery
resolve and grit to do this.
So
do it. Don’t let your fears become boxes
that enclose you. Open them out, feel them and turn them into the greatest
courage you are capable of. I promise you, nothing will go wrong. But if
you live by your fears, everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong and
you wont even have done the Funky Chicken.
While
we’re on what everyone tells you to be, let me also say that all the planning
in the world, won’t take you where you want to get to. It’s fine not to know
what you want to be twenty years from now. Most of those who had it all figured
out became bankers anyway. Oh this will appear on YouTube right?? There goes my
next big loan for the film from my friendly neighbourhood bank.
I
did a movie once called KabhiHaanKabhiNaa, in which I was the victim of a
lover’s confusions and my next lesson is precisely that. It’s ok to be confused. Confusion
is the route to all the clarity in the world. Don’t worry about it too much
and don’t ever take yourself seriously enough to be so clear about your own
ideas that you stop respecting other people’s. Our values are our values, they don’t make us any
better than anyone else, at best they make us different. Always try to see the
other person’s truth because like every movie has a story, every human being
has one too and you have no right to imagine that yours is better than anyone
else’s. You can leave that silliness to my esteemed colleagues and me!!
And
if you thought the last two stories I told you were crazy, here’s another one
in the reckoning for the Oscar for weirdest screenplay: Guddu. Guddu was my
name in a movie about loving and giving in which basically, I have an accident
(yes another one) but this time instead of almost wiping out my future mother
in law, I wipe out my girlfriend’s eyes. Many convoluted sub-plots including a
life threatening brain tumour, a legal battle for the right to donate organs
and a fast unto death, mylawyerfather, my religious mother and I are battling
over which one of us will donate our eyes to my blind girlfriend. In the end, I
recover miraculously and my mother dies donating her eyes to my girlfriendand
we all live happily ever after. Life lesson number four rears its head: Give of yourself to others. And while
you’re at it, make sure you realise that you aren’t doing anyone any favours by
being kind. It’s all just to make you feel thatsneaky little twinge that
comes from being utterly pleased with yourself.
After all, the one that gets the most benefit out of any act of kindness
or charity that you do will always be you. I don’t say this, as many see it, in
a transactiveor karmic way. Its not an “I do good, I get benefit” equation with
some white bearded figure taking notes from the heavens above. It’s a simple
truth. An act of goodness becomes worthless when you assign a brownie point to
yourself for it, no matter how subtly you allow yourself to do so. As
benevolent as your gesture might be; someone else could have made it too.
Regardless of how rich, successful and famous you become, don’t ever
underestimate the grace that other people bestow upon you just by being the
recipients of your kindnesses. You might be able to buy your friend a Rolls for
his/her birthday but its no substitute for a patient hearing of your sulky
rants on a bad hair day.
Sometimes
things just happen, as encapsulated in another movie title of mine:
KuchKuchHotaHai; and you know what? They don’t always add up (that would be
“One Two Ka four” as the list of titles continues). So my fifth lesson is this:
when life hits you with all the force of its resplendent rage, the Rolls isn’t
going to give you comfort. A friend’s grace will, and if you can’t find
resolution as easily as you would like to, don’t panic. Everything evolves as
you go along, Chalte- Chalte as we say in Hindi (and yes, that was another
movie I did but no more mad plots for God’s sake!!)
Even disasters eventually
resolve themselves. Give life the space to move at its own pace, pushing it
ahead only by way of being kind to yourself when you are hurting or in despair. You don’t always have to
figure things out or find an explanation for the circumstances you are in. It’s more prudent to accept that sometimes
there just isn’t one. “Ram Jaane” (God knows), as we say in Hindi and as a
priest responded to my orphan-child character when i asked him, what my name
was, in a movie of the same appellation. The boyplodded through three entire hours
of film referring to himself by that fatalistic phrase and why not? Who says
that what we call ourselves is any definition of who we really are? And that’s
lesson number six for you: All the names
you give yourself, or those that others call you, are just labels. You are
not defined by them no matter how flattering or uncomplimentary they are. What
defines you is your heart.
Ask
The Artist Formerly Known As Prince!! And learn a thing or two from him, if you
don’t believe this insanely sexy Indian Superstar standing in front of you. And
I say this out of experience because if I was to go by what all I am called on
Social Media I would be an old desperate manipulative has been star who swings
both ways while making crap movies, and these are just the good mentions.
If you aren’t charged upabout
doing something, if you don’t have what in Hindi we call the “Josh”, the fire
in your belly for it, then don’t do it. It’s a waste of your time and more
importantly, of those who pin their hopes on your endeavours too. Redefine
yourself if you have to but do it on your own terms and just get on with it. In
fact, like my character in the movie My Name is Khan, don’t forget where you
came from and who you really are. It ought to be the compass by which you
navigate through life’s vicissitudes. The North that keeps you oriented despite
a series of misfortunes or a shower of privilege.
One
of the biggest hits I made was an unexpected one and for once the plot was
neither meandering nor barking mad. I was the coach of a beleaguered women’s
hockey team that went on to overcome its struggles and win a world championship.
Its title was Chak De, an inspirational martial cry that Sikh soldiers used
while lifting logs in order to make bridges across rivers on their campaigns
against their enemies. It implies the will to get up and get on with it, which
brings me to life lesson number seven: whatever
it is that is pulling you back, its not going away unless you stand up and
start forging your own path with all your might in the opposite direction.Stop
whining and start moving, so to speak. Sadness
and happiness have the same quality of transience. Life is a balanced exchange
of one with the other.And this is lesson number eight: Don’t attach yourself to either, they’re both going to change with the
same certitude. Take them with the ephemeral spirit of their impermanence
and manage them with a healthy dose of good humour. Laugh at yourself when you
are despairing, shed a tear or two when one of my movie plots makes you
hysterical with laughter (we did actually consider Guddu donating a single eye
to his blind girlfriend and both of them waltzing into the sunset eye patch to
eye patch). KabhiKhushiKabhiGham was the title of an Indian style family drama
in which I was one of many heroes and it means just that: to be happy
sometimes, and sad others, is the very beauty of a life lived in full measure.
Why fail yourself by desiring one emotion and detesting the other?
You
know, I’ve acted in over 50full length movies, if I took you through ajourney
of each title, we’d be sitting here forever and you’d all end up fast asleep (this
wonderful venue being most un-cemetery like notwithstanding) so I’ll wrap up
with my last two lessons.
Live from the heart. Dil Se.
Love.
Love people, love the world around you, love animals and birds, and big cities
and mountains, love dreams, love life, love your work, your friends and your
enemies even if you feel least like it. Most importantly, my friends; love
yourselves. Embrace all that this life has in store for you, let your heart be
as deep as the deepest ocean and as wide as the farthest horizon. Know that it
is limitless. Love is not an excuse to grab or to hold or to own or to barter.
It is the only excuse you will ever have to call yourself special.And if
someone you love lets you down, don’t fault yourself for not trusting him,
fault yourself for not trusting your love enough to forgive his/her trespasses.
You
never know what the future will bring, whether there will be a tomorrow or not.
I died at a shockingly young age in a movie called Kal Ho Na Ho which means
exactly that. And I wasn’t even a smoker!!! I never let my two older children
watch it to the end, we even filmed a whole alternate ending especially for
them. But now they have grown up and like all of you, will soon be embarking on
a wondrous journeyof their own. Instead of trying to protect them from life,
the wiser and older version of me grabs every chance to tell them: live as hard
as you can in this very moment. Live
now. Live today. You may not see it with your youthful eyes, but NOW is as much
time as you will ever get. Because tomorrow we will all be dead. And just in
case there is no cycle of rebirth etc…why take a chance. I don’t want to end
this on a cynical note by reminding you about the reality of death. I want to
let you all know that how important your today…your now is. Study hard. Work
hard. Play harder. Don’t be bound by rules…don’t hurt anybody and never ever
live somebody else’s dream. Remember however many times you go wrong, no matter
how many times you fail, despair, feel like this world is against you….in the
words of Bob Marley…at the end everythingsgonna be alright. And in my words. “
Hindifilmonkitarah life meinbhi, anthmein sab kuchtheek ho jaatahai. Aur agar
na ho, tohwohanthnahihai…picture abhibaakihai mere doston.” Take it as the only
truth you need to know. Take it and believe it because the most unlikely to
make it Bollywoood isis telling you
this…the most romantic hero who doesn’t look anything like chocolate or taste
like it.
“Now”
all you bored professors out there in the first row, come on up: lets do the
Lungi Dance !!!
